Law

Military

Publishing

noun an order which forbids somebody from doing something

verb to forbid something or to make something illegal

Business

acronym forbond anticipation note

(written as BAN)

Origin & History of “ban”

Ban is one of a widespread group of words in the European languages. Its ultimate source is the Indo-European base *bha-, which also gave Englishfame (from a derivative of Latin fārī ‘speak’) and phase (from Greek phāsis). The Germanic offshoot of the Indo-European base, and source of the English word, was *bannan, which originally probably meant simply ‘speak, proclaim’. This gradually developed through ‘proclaim with threats’ to ‘put a curse on’, but the sense ‘prohibit’ does not seem to have arisen until as late as the 19th century.

The Germanic base *bann- was borrowed into Old French as the nounban ‘proclamation’. From there it crossed into English and probably mingled with the cognate English noun, middle English iban (the descendant of Old English gebann). It survives today in the pluralformbanns ‘proclamation of marriage’. The adjective derived from Old French ban was banal, acquired by English in the 18th century. It originally meant ‘of compulsory military service’ (from the word’s basic sense of ‘summoning by proclamation’); this was gradually generalized through ‘open to everyone’ to ‘commonplace’.